Next week, Republicans will finally be ready to send their Keystone XL bill to President Obama, who has promised to veto it on procedural grounds without a second thought. That won’t end the partisan bickering over the pipeline, which has been raging for the past six years and counting, but it will largely freeze the fight in place. The GOP lacks the votes it needs for an override, and the State Department is refusing to say when it will make a final recommendation on the project, which is what the president says he’s waiting on. Republicans, then, will have done all they can—and Obama all he has to.

But with the Keystone fight losing steam, another high-profile energy battle is bubbling back up: the decades-old debate over Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, the proposed site of a massive federal repository for America’s nuclear waste. The project, which dates back to the Reagan administration, has long been a top priority for the nuclear industry and its Republican allies, but it was more or less left for dead after the 2008 election. Obama promised on the campaign trail that he would block the project and, with the help of then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, the president effectively did just that shortly after he took office.

Yucca seems poised to draw the type of attention that made Keystone a polarizing staple of stump speeches, fundraising pitches, and attack ads”

Now that Republicans control both chambers of Congress, however, Yucca appears destined to return to the national stage. Industry officials have said that GOP leaders assured them privately that jump-starting Yucca is one of the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s top priorities for this year. And, Rep. John Shimkus, the Illinois Republican who chairs that panel’s Environment and Economy Subcommittee, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last month that he is working on just such a bill that he hopes the House will then vote on this summer. Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and James Inhofe of Oklahoma, both of whom lead key energy-themed committees in the upper chamber, have also suggested nuclear waste is on their agendas.

Republicans and Democrats are sure to clash on a whole host of energy issues in a post-Keystone world, but a singular project like Yucca seems poised to draw the type of attention that made Keystone a polarizing staple of stump speeches, fundraising pitches, and attack ads during the past two elections.

Julie Jacobson/ Associated PressIn 2011, Rep. Michael Burgess, a Republican from Texas, uses his cell phone to take a photo of the entrance to Yucca Mountain in Mercury, Nev. Years later, the federal Energy Department still needs water and land rights before it gets approval to entomb the nation's most radioactive waste 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas.

The two projects are, of course, vastly different. One is a 1,700-mile pipeline that would move tar sands oil from Canada to the Gulf Coast, the other amounts to a high-tech underground garbage dump that would house 77,000 tons of spent nuclear reactor fuel, as well as the detritus that remains from the nation’s bomb-building binge during the Cold War. Politically speaking, though, the two projects share more than enough in common for the fight over Yucca to pretty seamlessly pick up where the fight over Keystone left off. Both are individual projects that have become de facto litmus tests in the larger fight over the nation’s energy future. Support and opposition both fall largely—but not completely—along party lines. And, most important of all given the existing tensions in the nation’s capital, both have been wrapped in bureaucratic red tape by a White House that would prefer to block each project on procedural grounds than on their merits alone.

The long-stalled Yucca project began to inch forward again in 2013 when a federal appeals court forced the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to restart the process of evaluating whether the site could safely serve as the nation’s nuclear dump, and rebuked the panel for “flouting the law” for abandoning its review in 2010. (Then-NRC Chairman Gregory Jaczko—a former Reid aide whom Obama appointed to lead the panel—cited a lack of federal funding as the reason the panel pulled the plug on the evaluation. In reality, while Jaczko’s old Senate boss had managed to cut future funding for Yucca, the commission still had $11 million left to spend.)

WikimediaThe nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain will sit inside a long ridge, approximately 1,000 feet beneath the surface and 1,000 feet above the water table. Consisting of 64 kilometres (40 miles) of tunnels, the repository will accommodate an estimated 78,000 tonne of nuclear waste.

The panel has now finished that long-delayed review, releasing the final two volumes of the five-part safety evaluation late last month. The NRC report—not unlike the State Department’s preliminary evaluation of Keystone—has proved to be a Rorschach test inside the Beltway, with both sides seeing only what they want. Supporters tout the fact that the panel concluded the design would be capable of safely isolating the high-level radioactive waste for 1 million years as required. (And here I’ll pause briefly to channel my former colleague Timothy Noah when I shout in disbelief: One million years is a long time!) Critics, meanwhile, point to another important finding, one that has more to do with the practicality of building Yucca than with its theoretical performance: that the project can’t proceed without the government acquiring crucial land and water rights, something that appears all but impossible given Nevada’s steadfast opposition to the project.

The gridlock, meanwhile, is proving costly. Right now, our nuclear waste is spread out among 70-odd commercial nuclear power plants around the country. Burying the waste deep underground—whether in the Nevada desert or somewhere else—is currently considered the nation’s best bet for permanent (or, more accurately, permanent-as-possible) disposal. The Energy Department has been collecting tens of billions of dollars in fees from reactor owners since the 1980s with the promise of taking the spent reactor fuel off their hands. But without Yucca or an alternative in place—or even in the works—courts have assessed billions of dollars in damages against the government for failing to live up to its end of the deal. According to the New York Times, the Energy Department’s potential liability is now upward of $20 billion.

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesProtesters stand in front of a mock nuclear waste cask, in 2002 in Washington, DC. The demonstrators are protesting the proposal to bury nuclear waste in Nevada's Yucca Mountain, a still-simmering issue over a decade later.

The Yucca stalemate also serves as a proxy for the larger debate over what role nuclear power will play in America’s energy future. The GOP—which it should be noted isn’t ready to admit man is a cause of climate change—has called nuclear power “the most reliable zero-carbon-emissions source of energy that we have.” The climate crowd has a more complicated relationship with nuclear. James Hansen and several other leading climate scientists see it as essential in the fight against global warming, while others in the field point to the long-term unknowns and the shorter-term carbon costs involved in the mining and transportation of uranium, and the construction and operation of reactors. Heavyweight environmental groups like Greenpeace and the Sierra Club, meanwhile, are steadfast in their opposition, arguing that nuclear is too expensive, dangerous, and time-consuming to be worth the effort.

For his part, Obama has paid lip service to nuclear power but has done little to spur the nuclear renaissance the industry was dreaming of a decade ago. In his latest budget, the president proposes creating an interim storage site for the nuclear waste at a cost of $5.7 billion over the next decade. In the past, Yucca proponents have fought similar plans, fearing that short-term consolidation would weaken the case for long-term action.

The NRC’s final safety evaluation, meanwhile, begins to clear the way for the panel to begin holding licensing hearings, which officials have suggested could take three years or more once they finally kick off. Given that, don’t be surprised if the Yucca fight that starts in Congress later this year sticks around through the next election and beyond—just like Keystone before it.

CALGARY — On a whirlwind trip north of the border, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie staked out a claim to be Canada’s new BFF, reiterating his support for the stalled Keystone XL pipeline and praising Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The Republican lawmaker, who is widely expected to run for his party’s presidential nomination in 2016, kicked off his three-city tour in the country’s energy capital and the province most affected by the years-long regulatory limbo that has beset TransCanada Corp.’s controversial project.

“The answer is ‘yes.’ I don’t think there’s anything more to say about it. [It’s been] much too much,” he said at a joint news conference with Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.

“On the merits, it should be approved.”

Mr. Christie said he hopes to meet Mr. Harper, along with Joe Oliver, federal finance minister, and Jason Kenney, the federal employment and social development minister.

“I have been so impressed with the prime minister’s sound, skillful, principled, conservative leadership,” the governor said, noting he “can’t wait to personally shake his hand.”

THE CANADIAN PRESS/Larry MacDougal“I’ve gotten the impression over time watching American foreign policy that Canada has been an afterthought, and I think it should be a first thought,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told a Calgary audience on Thursday, Dec. 4.

His speech was crafted to play well in Canada and back home, where he needs to shore up Republican support.

Mr. Christie said he made his trip north of the border purposefully.

“I’ve gotten the impression over time watching American foreign policy that Canada has been an afterthought, and I think it should be a first thought,” he said.

“I don’t think we pay enough attention to this relationship as Americans in general, so I made a very conscious decision to come to Canada and to come here [to] Alberta because we should treat our friends with both respect and attention.”

Mr. Christie also spoke at the Calgary Petroleum Club, a key pit stop for Canadian politicians on the fundraising circuit.

Among his hearers was Russ Girling, TransCanada’s chief executive, who said Mr. Christie’s advocacy would help correct misinformation about the pipeline.

“Anybody who has this kind of stature who can talk about the facts in the marketplace and in the public domain, I think, is helpful. At the end of the day, this is just a pipeline, but it’s become this centre focal point. … Let’s bring down the rhetoric, let’s build the pipeline and get on with dealing with real policy issues like greenhouse gas [emissions].”

‘I don’t think we pay enough attention to this relationship as Americans in general, so I made a very conscious decision to come to Canada’

Mr. Christie’s fact-and-number laden speech earned him a standing ovation at the club, a favourite venue in the Alberta oilpatch.

The province has twice hosted international figures in recent weeks, a fact that reflects its growing energy-driven economic and political stature.

Mr. Christie followed on the heels of an official state visit by Francois Hollande, the French president, who stopped in Banff, Alta., before travelling on to Ottawa last month.

The New Jersey governor is also due to visit Ottawa and Toronto.

“Symbolically, with the message he wants to send home, this is a good place to start,” said Ted Morton, a former MLA and provincial energy minister who teaches at the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.

“Energy makes the world run and Calgary is the energy capital of Canada. It’s come a long way in a hurry.”

Mr. Christie is considered one of the top five potential Republican nominees for the 2016 election. This trip, along with an earlier visit to Mexico, is seen as a bid to raise his profile and improve his credentials on the foreign affairs file.

“Like a lot of U.S. politicians, the ones who [come up] through state politics, he’s been very busy with his own state and his own region over the last decade or so. If you want to be president of the United States, you better have a little bit of exposure,” Mr. Morton said.

Supporting Keystone is a popular position, he added.

“Public opinion polls show that two-thirds of Americans support it. I think it’s a positive message and one that helps him.”

Mr. Christie is only one among several potential contenders, however.

He also faces more obstacles than most on the path to the White House, including allegations he deliberately closed a New Jersey bridge in an act of possible political retribution against a Democrat mayor in 2013. He has so far been cleared of wrongdoing.

Logic would suggest it would take a pretty serious issue to create a major rift between Canada and the U.S., given how close the countries have been over the years.

While obvious cultural differences exist – Americans have trouble finding Canada on a map, while Canadians boggle at their love of shooting one another – as neighbours the relationship is generally strong. The most serious recent conflict resulted from Ottawa’s refusal to engage in the Iraq invasion, a position numerous other close U.S. allies shared. That argument was about war, and human lives.

It certainly seems illogical that an oil pipeline should be elevated to the level of friction now represented by the Keystone XL project. But through one means or another, the project has become a source of real conflict. On Wednesday the CEO of TransCanada Corp. came pretty close to calling the President of the United States a liar. Russ Girling said that “the notion that this oil is going to get exported is pure fabrication by those that are opposed to our project.”

Later, he added: “It’s very highly unlikely that any of this crude leaves North America.”

The timing was important, because Mr. Obama made those very allegations just last week. The pipeline, he said was merely “providing the ability of Canada to pump their oil, send it through our land, down to the Gulf, where it will be sold everywhere else.” He was parroting the latest line in the war against Keystone mounted by U.S. environmentalists, which portrays Canada as a nefarious purveyor of dirty oil, with plans to send shipments across the pristine U.S. to ships in the Gulf, which will immediately transport it to China.

In reality, TransCanada doesn’t own the oil, it just ships it for the oil companies. It gets sent to a refining hub in Texas, which turns it into gasoline. The refiners say less than 10% of the gasoline they refine gets exported. If the refiners did decide, illogically, to export it all, they would have to ship in other oil from Venezuela or elsewhere to replace it, which makes no sense at all. The U.S. State Department, which has assessed Keystone to death, found that pipelines have no impact on U.S. exports, and that Alberta’s oil is likely to stay in the U.S.

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In his apparently desperate determination to continue delaying the pipeline project, Mr. Obama is clearly reaching for any excuse he can find, even easily-discounted ones like the export ruse. The question is why he’s so determined. Keystone is a big deal for TransCanada, and important for Canada, but it’s not the end of the world. As has been pointed out repeatedly, the oil will get to market one way or another. Without the pipeline it will travel by train, which is more dangerous and environmentally risky.

In his refusal to make a decision, however, Mr. Obama has turned it into a major argument between the two countries. Prime Minister Stephen Harper has played his part in that, cheekily suggesting the whole issue was a “no brainer”, and having Canada’s representatives in Washington lobby hard for approval. But every commercial interest in America employs lobbyists to argue their case; Canada is just playing the game the American way. And Mr. Obama has made things worse by choosing delay over decision: if he wants to say no to the pipeline, he should say no. If he’d done that at any time in the past six years the issue would have been settled. By dragging it out, endlessly promising a decision once the next round of pointless investigation is complete, he has kept it alive as an irritant, and one that has now been seized on by his opponents in Congress.

Now he’s faced with a serious domestic crunch. If he vetoes approval of the pipeline, which the new Republican Congress is sure to approve, he will torpedo any hope of co-operation from that same Congress during his final two years in power. His treatment of Keystone could turn him into the lamest of lame ducks. And for what? A project that is safer than the alternative and helps ensure U.S. energy security at a time the Middle East is self-destructing. At the same time he will be offending a country that just this week used its fighters to blow up significant targets in the U.S.-led war against ISIS. Some friend, the president.

No wonder even the CBC can’t figure out Mr. Obama, and is runningcolumns declaring him a failure.

Americans have been trying to understand their president for six years, and his dismal favourability ratings suggest they’ve given up trying. Canadians have been slower to get there, since we don’t feel the impact of his decisions first-hand. But Keystone is giving us a taste of that experience. It’s not impressive.

In what is charitably called the “colourful” politics of Louisiana anything is possible, but it likely a true novelty that Canada is ever at issue. But it was this week.

Senator Mary Landrieu (whose father was once mayor of New Orleans and whose brother currently is) has been the Democratic incumbent here for 18 years. After the trouncing the Democrats took in the elections a few weeks ago, she is widely expected to lose in the runoff on Dec. 6 (if no candidate wins an outright majority on election day, Louisiana holds a runoff)

To save her political hide, Landrieu has mounted a vigorous effort to force President Barack Obama to approve the Keystone XL pipeline project, an effort which failed by one vote in the U.S. Senate on Tuesday. The fact that there was even a vote at all was because her Democratic colleagues were trying to help Landrieu depict herself as a stalwart defender of Louisiana’s energy interests.

Louisiana is an oil state and the Keystone pipeline network will bring crude from Alberta, Montana and North Dakota to the refineries on the Gulf coast of Texas and Louisiana. The environmental lobby has made blocking Keystone a test of President Obama’s commitment to clean energy. He has refused to approve it as the studies and reports have mounted up. Landrieu’s bill would have forced him to approve it, and would have faced a presidential veto. In the meantime though, it would have bolstered her chances in a petroleum state. Landrieu’s decision to defy many of her Democratic colleagues and the President is an argument about what it means to be a petro-state in the 21st century. It is a moral argument with major political implications.

In the U.S. Senate debate on Keystone on Tuesday the rhetoric was pointed. Canadian oil was described as “filthy” and “lethal” and the project depicted by opponents as a dastardly plot to exploit America as a mere instrument of Canadian greed. The facts are rather to the contrary, but the shape of the debate bears watching.

The dark image of petro-states arises from images of Arabian sheikhdoms, built on near-slave labour with profits put to various unsavoury causes. After 9/11, security implications were added to commercial and moral considerations. The emergence of kleptocrats in Russia or communists in Venezuela as energy powers has not improved the moral status of petro-states.

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The Keystone debate has complicated the status of petro-states. On one hand, a state such as Louisiana sees Alberta as an ally, along with Montana and North Dakota, enhancing energy security and production with high labour, safety and environmental standards. On the other hand, environmentalists are inclined to think of those same regions as ecological outlaws, petro-states to be considered morally dubious as expanding producers of fossil fuels. Perhaps not as dubious as Arabian, Iranian, Russian and Venezuelan petro-states, but dubious nonetheless. For Canada to be considered in such company is quite a shock.

To the extent that Canada enters into American political considerations, it is customarily in praiseworthy terms as a staunch ally, reliable trading partner and friendly neighbour. It is somewhat jarring then to see how energy politics can depict Canada as something of a threat. Even the President’s comments that there is nothing in Keystone for Americans is telling, despite that it will be built by Americans to bring, in part, North Dakota oil to Louisiana refineries. Even if it had no benefit for Americans, though, that it would be good for friendly Canada appears no longer to be a mark in its favour.

Keystone has assumed an inflated importance in both American politics and in Canada-U.S. relations because it is a fight over the moral status of oil and gas production. Indeed, it touches upon the character of producing states themselves. Keystone lost this week, which means it will be a live issue into the new year. Whether Canada’s petro-state status is benign or malign will be an issue for years to come.<

As an amusing/distressing aside, Louisiana remains utterly singular. In the runoff for the sixth congressional district — which, in the absurd gerrymandering customary here, stretches from the capital Baton Rouge down to Houma — the leading candidate is Edwin Edwards. He served four separate terms as governor in three different decades and then 10 years in jail for embezzlement. At age 87, freshly off a reality show about his third wife (51 years his junior) and their infant son, Edwards thought himself still a plausible force in Louisiana politics. Some of what happens in Louisiana is surely only relevant here. The petro-state debate is relevant globally.

Barack Obama is Canada’s American president. Right? Of course right. In the lead-up to his 2012 battle with the airbrushed Republican Mitt Romney, with his binders full of women, polls showed Canadians overwhelmingly preferred Obama. Even in Alberta, according to a Harrisdecima survey taken in July of 2012, Canadians would have opted for the urbane, likeable Chicago Democrat over his bean-counter rival by a margin of more than 30%, given a vote.

But our love is unrequited. It always has been. And the indefinite shelving of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline linking Alberta’s oil sands with the Texas Gulf Coast, once considered a sure thing and now on life support thanks to Obama, is the incontrovertible evidence. This U.S. president cares about his own narrow political interests and making symbolic Green gestures —­ and Canada, workers on both sides of the border, Western energy security, and simple honesty be damned.

Is there an American public-interest argument at play in the Keystone XL debate? Yes indeed — in favour. Republicans and centrist Democrats have argued for years that the pipeline is a no-brainer, not only because of the thousands of construction jobs at stake, which is of immediate interest to the U.S. labour unions now howling their outrage, but because of the strategic protection it provides in the event of a cutoff or abridgement of energy supplies elsewhere —­ say, the Middle East, or Russia.

The Arab Spring is not working out particularly well. Now Russia, led by the crazed Vladimir Putin, is using its energy muscle in Europe as a lever in its continuing efforts to seize by force the territory of another sovereign country. Russia is the world’s second-largest producer of natural gas. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries, including Canada, are making a show of bulking up their scanty military power in Eastern Europe.

But by far the best leverage the West has, against Russia, is economic. The United States is now the world’s largest producer of natural gas, thanks to exploding shale production. Some in Washington have advocated greatly expanding shipments of liquid natural gas to Ukraine. It’s not difficult to see where that leads. Though there’s no direct, immediate connection to Keystone, there is no denying the strategic value of creating a North American energy fortress. The Keystone XL pipeline is critical to the proper future functioning of the North American energy market and would therefore be the cornerstone —­ call it the keystone —­ of that fortress.

But What about greenhouse gas emissions and the survival of the planet, which will surely turn to ash if the 174 billion barrels of crude in the oil sands are extracted? The U.S. State Department said itself, months ago, that the project’s ultimate effect on GHG emissions will be negligible, because the oil sands will ultimately be developed, and the crude delivered to market, if not by pipeline to the U.S. then by other means, to Asia or elsewhere. Not all the tea in Malaysia, nor billionaire Tom Steyer nor actor Robert Redford, can prevent oil and gas exploration firms from satisfying exploding emerging-market demand for oil. Failing a mature pipeline network it will be shipped overland by rail, which is less secure.

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More tellingly still, the New York Times helpfully pointed out in its Sunday edition, Canada and Keystone are bit players on the global carbon-emissions front. In 2011, the NYT’s Coral Davenport notes, citing statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency, global emissions worldwide amounted to 32.6 billion tonnes. China produced the largest share of any one country, at 8.7 bilion. The U.S. came second at 5.5 billion. Of American emissions, electric power plants, mostly driven by coal, were responsible for 2.8 billion tonnes, while automobiles accounted for 1.9 billion.

Canada’s total emissions, the same year? Wait for it: 0.6 billion tonnes. And the estimated annual emissions stemming from the 830,000 barrels of oil projected to move through Keystone XL, in the event the pipeline ever gets built? 18.7 million tonnes. It is, as one of Davenport’s sources notes, “a rounding error,” in the global context.

Mitt Romney, the unloved technocrat, promised in 2012 to approve Keystone XL on his first day in the White House

Yet for the sake of this rounding error, even as the United States continues to dawdle with its own coal-fired power plants, even as U.S. public opinion solidly favours construction (a Pew poll taken in March found 61% in favour 27% against), even as a both Conservatives and Liberals in Ottawa, and the governments of Alberta and Saskatchewan, lobby hard for passage, Obama’s response is to kick the can down the road, in perpetuity?

It is a display of shallowness, cowardice and economic incompetence on a grand scale, eclipsed only by the President’s strange recent habit of running foreign policy by serially shaking his fist. Mitt Romney, the unloved technocrat, promised in 2012 to approve Keystone XL on his first day in the White House. Romney must cry himself to sleep each night as he surveys the growing shambles his defeat has wrought.

Most people have heard the saying, “if you sit down at a poker game and don’t see a sucker, get up — it’s you.” For Canada, and the issue of the Keystone XL pipeline, all that can be said is, “Stand up, Canada. And fast.”

Canada has only one customer for its oil — the United States. So it’s no surprise that the Canadian government has been at the table playing every card it can to push for the Keystone pipeline to the U.S. But it’s taken time, and as months became years, a funny thing happened: The U.S. became an oil-extraction juggernaut.

The U.S., extracting oil from under its own land, and using less of it each year, is weaning itself off the addiction to foreign oil. This will change everything about our policy dalliance on Canadian pipeline development and the dilettantes who engage in it, something everybody seems to understand, except Canadians.

In a recent National Post Q&A, former CIA analyst Helima Croft, now the commodities strategist at Barclays Capital, said, “One of the big arguments I remember while I used to do my old job with the U.S. government was about alternative supply of energy. There was no sense of being energy independent. So Canada was a great story; it’s a stable producer. So it’s an interesting argument now coming out is how Keystone politics are complicated by the fact that there is so much U.S. crude … with the explosive growth of the U.S. shale play, it’s like, do we need anybody?”

Postmedia columnist Deborah Yedlin delivered the same insight to us in her interview with American economist Nouriel Roubini. Asked what Canada needs to do with Alberta’s oil sands, Roubini replied, “You have to increase export capacity. The question is, can you build pipelines and rail capacity fast enough to meet the increase in supply?” A sobering question from the economist who predicted the 2008 recession.

Our only customer — to whom our product is already sold at a discount — is racing to self-sufficiency in the product we sell only to them. Pipeline development is no longer some no-risk, debate-club exercise. These new pipelines are our best bet to preserve what we currently rely upon as Canadians.

But the new pipelines better bloody well be aimed in the right direction.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) advises industrialized nations on energy policy, and only months ago, was asserting that Saudi Arabia would remain the world’s largest petroleum producer until 2035. The IEA has now declared that the U.S. will become the world’s largest producer by 2015. This overturns what we thought we knew about petroleum production.

In fairness to Ottawa, its dogged focus on Keystone was born of a simpler time, when Canada could count on — bank on, even — the everlasting dependence of our only customer on our oil. Who knew the Americans would tire of foreign-oil dependence? Who knew they’d extract their own from under their own soil, and so much, so quickly?

Well, they have, and Canadians are ignoring it, or denying it. No matter which, it remains that absent pipelines to new customers, for Ottawa or any Canadian to go all-in on completion of Keystone — or any pipeline — to a country on the verge of petroleum self-sufficiency offers more risk for this Canadian lifeblood to be drained than purchased at a competitive price. Keystone is, and can only be, a vampire pipeline until we can get our petroleum commodities to customers other than Uncle Sam.

Because we don’t have the pipelines capable of getting our product to a port for export overseas, we can’t sell our commodity at a non-discounted price. In the end, what flows though existing oil pipelines today to the U.S. provides all of us with a portion of what we do right now to fund, preserve and to care for our lives — payments from the federal government to provincial governments for myriad programs and initiatives, including health care, education and government pensions.

At the U.S. table of Keystone pipeline poker, we’re the sucker

Canadians need information on what the existing export of petroleum means to each and every one of us. What’s required is a measure that pinpoints, by province, by region, and by demographic group, the benefits in our individual lives from what flows through existing pipelines. We need to know what we’ll lose with a U.S. that’s self-sufficient and no longer in need of our product.

Right now, we don’t know. And that, in a nutshell, is the folly in the current drive to seek “social licence,” i.e., public support, for the Northern Gateway and other pipelines. Failure to educate Canadians in how they benefit from existing pipelines to our one disappearing customer has left us chasing support for new pipelines from the small group of interests least motivated to grant it.

Canadians made aware of the existing benefits of our oil industry— benefits that are increasingly vulnerable due to the dramatic changes in our only customer — will be quick to embrace the urgency to access new markets and customers. They’ll do this in order that they, their children, and their children’s children can continue to enjoy these benefits.

But right now, at the U.S. table of Keystone pipeline poker, we’re the sucker. Time to stand up, time to walk away. No shame in that, given the stakes. In fact, all that need be said to our American friends is that, like them, we’re going to start looking after our interests first, too.

And if, after we build access to new customers paying higher prices, the U.S. still seeks our oil product, we’ll be in a better position to set prices for the U.S. that aren’t discounted, and push for the pipelines that provide a product they want, from the “stable producer” they value.

Within the last several weeks, two of the three major pipeline projects being mooted to carry Alberta oil sands bitumen to tidewater have moved one step closer toward eventual construction. The Northern Gateway pipeline received conditional approval from the National Energy Board (NEB), subject to more than 200 changes being made to the proposal to ensure a greater degree of safety and security.

In the United States, the State Department issued the final version of its long-awaited study of the potential global environmental impact of the Keystone XL pipeline, from Alberta to the U.S. Gulf Coast. This is the second and more complete State Department report on the pipeline, and should address President Obama’s oft-stated concerns about the pipeline adding to the global emissions picture — if, in fact, this is really an issue for him.

In both cases, these decisions are but first steps in what will be prolonbed further debate, lobbying, legal action and partisan-motivated delay. Opponents of the Northern Gateway project, including First Nations, have announced they will challenge the NEB decision in court. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled that First Nations must be consulted on projects such as these. But even if the courts eventually decide the pipeline can go ahead, the political process will add further delay.

This country will have a federal election in 2015, and Northern Gateway will be debated at great length during the campaign — especially in British Columbia, where the loss of any Conservative seats could mean the difference between a majority or minority government, or even decide the outcome of the election itself. The safest thing the government in Ottawa can do until after the election is nothing. So no one should expect the Harper Conservatives to lead the charge to implement the NEB decision for at least another 18 months.

The Supreme Court never declared that First Nations had to agree to major projects such as this pipeline — only that they be consulted — but it is simply unrealistic for anyone to believe that in the 21st century, something like this can be rammed through without the agreement, if not the support, of the First Nations. This is not the 1880s, and the Northern Gateway is not the Canadian Pacific Railway, even if some pipeline supporters wish it were so. Thus there will be negotiations with the First Nations, and that too will take time.

Similar delays have already popped up in the United States regarding Keystone XL. First, the State Department report must now be followed by an official 90-day period of cogitation by other federal departments. That means there will be no presidential decision on the project until early May at the earliest. However, early May is right at the beginning of the Congressional election campaign. There too, the safest thing the president can do is nothing. So it is unlikely there will be any presidential decision for up to a year, a period that pipeline opponents will use to continue to try to kill it.

In both countries, therefore, there is a long way to go before shovels hit the earth. And it is entirely appropriate and within democratic norms for pipeline opponents to do whatever is lawful to delay or even kill either or both of two projects over that time.

What is entirely inappropriate, at this or any other time, is the use of violence to interfere in a carefully regulated democratic process. Threats of violence — veiled and not so veiled — have already been uttered following the NEB decision. Are the threats credible? In New Brunswick last fall, violence was used to stop a fracking operation and police vehicles were destroyed. No one has paid the price for that rioting.

Governments on both sides of the border must make clear — now — that violence won’t be tolerated and that they will be ready to discharge what is, after all, the first mandate of government: protecting the security of citizens and property.

If pipeline opponents choose to use civil disobedience to make their point — a legitimate tactic in the face of unrelenting political, social or economic oppression — they must also understand that a true act of civil disobedience, such as was practiced by Ghandi or Martin Luther King Jr., entails willingness to pay the penalty for the act.

National Post

David Bercuson is a fellow of the Canadian Defence & Foreign Affairs Institute and director of the Centre for Military and Strategic Studies with the University of Calgary

Stephen Harper heads to Mexico to meet with Barack Obama next week as part of the North American Leaders’ Summit but, according to the man some believe will lead the Conservative Party one day, he may as well stay home.

Jim Prentice — the former minister of Indian affairs, environment, and industry — was in Ottawa Wednesday talking energy and the environment. He left politics more than three years ago to join CIBC as vice-chairman but is still mentioned as a potential candidate for the Tory leadership, should the job become vacant. (For the record, when I asked him about his leadership ambitions recently, he said he had closed the door on politics when he left Ottawa.)

His message to a power crowd at the Economic Club was that Canada needs to look beyond Mr. Obama if it wants to see progress on the energy file. He said he remains confident the Keystone pipeline will be approved but is less optimistic that it will be on the watch of this president.

He said his experience is that the opportunity to transform the bilateral relationship with the United States comes during the first six to 18 months of a new president’s mandate. “More than a year ago, I gave a speech and talked about how challenging it would be to get the attention of the Americans during Obama’s second term – a term that from the outset seemed destined to be focused on internal issues. That has proven to be true in spades. The course of the next few years appears to be set …. Canada’s next opportunity to directly engage the U.S. in a profound, substantive and meaningful way will not come until 2017,” he said.

By that time, Canada needs to have achieved west coast access for its oil and natural gas, so that it is not reliant on the U.S. as its only customer, he said.

“We need to be a forceful partner with alternative [markets], so that we’re not dependent and supplicant to a U.S. marketplace that is over-supplied.”

Without access to export markets in Asia, Canada’s energy revolution could stall, he said.

“Without it, we are heading towards a reality in which there is no market for increased oil sands production beyond 2020,” he said, pointing to discounts of up to 40% on the world oil price received by Canadian producers because of periodic production gluts. This week’s budget suggested that Canadian exports would be $7.1-billion a year higher, if Canadian crude prices kept pace with world prices.

‘I’m adamant about this. I don’t think we should impose carbon charges on Canadian industry unilaterally… The U.S. is not imposing costs on its industry, so why should we?’

The CIBC vice-chair suggested that success in reaching tidewater with a pipeline would give Canada leverage when it comes to confronting worrying policy trends such as emergence of state level fuel standards, designed to keep oil sands oil from the American market.

Mr. Prentice’s view is similar to the one expressed by Mr. Harper during an interview in the U.S. when he said he “won’t take no for an answer,” if Mr. Obama denies the Keystone project his approval. Mr. Harper was widely mocked but his essential point was that Canada will keep pushing for approval under the next president, if it is turned down by the incumbent.

Mr. Prentice’s position on pricing carbon also appears close to that of the Prime Minister, even if he is more willing to elaborate than Mr. Harper.

The Conservatives have long promised oil and gas regulations — and failed to deliver. Mr. Prentice is sympathetic to the lack of action.

“I’m adamant about this. I don’t think we should impose carbon charges on Canadian industry unilaterally just to show good faith at the table with the Americans. The U.S. is not imposing costs on its industry, so why should we?”

Chris Roussakis/National Post<strong>By Linda Nguyen</strong>
TORONTO — Harassing phone calls made during the last federal election by people claiming to represent Liberal candidates suggest a “pattern of wrongdoing and misbehaviour” that needs to be fully investigated, interim Liberal leader Bob Rae said Saturday.
“Dirty tricks are not permissible at anytime. They are not permissible in election campaigns,” he said in Toronto.
“They are not permissible at any time because they absolutely corrupt democracy. They corrupt free choice and they corrupt people’s ability to make a choice and do the right thing.”
[np-related]
Flanked by supporters and MPs holding placards that read “No Dirty Tricks, Mr. Harper,” Rae said he believes the calls were not the actions of one person, but a concerted effort by a group of individuals targeting Liberal candidates.
“It just isn’t good enough for the Conservatives to say they didn’t know anything about it,” he said. “That defies all credibility. The notion that one person would be responsible for these robocalls.”
On Friday, <em>Postmedia News</em> and the <em>Ottawa Citizen</em> reported to find evidence of a “systematic voter-suppression campaign” against Liberals in tight ridings during last May’s federal election.
Automated messages reportedly told voters that their polling stations had been changed or directed them to non-existent stations.
The campaign also allegedly consisted of harassing phone calls targeting Liberal voters in 14 ridings — the majority of which were in southern Ontario.
Liberal supporters say the calls usually came late at night or early in the morning from people claiming to represent the local Liberal candidate.
Calls also were placed to voters with Jewish-sounding names during the Saturday Sabbath and in one riding with a South Asian candidate, voters received phone calls from someone who appeared to be imitating a Pakistani accent.
Those who received the calls say they got them repeatedly and that the person on the other line spoke to them rudely.
Rae says the party received numerous calls Saturday about these calls and have identified at least 27 that were targeted during the May election.
He urged anyone — including Prime Minster Stephen Harper — to come forward with information if they have it as the RCMP and Elections Canada continue with their probe into these reports.
Rae said he has no doubt these “dirty tricks” led to Liberal candidates losing their seats in certain ridings.
On Friday, Rae sent a letter to House of Commons Speaker Andrew Scheer, asking him to allow an emergency debate on the matter when Parliament resumes Monday.
Interim federal NDP leader Nycole Turmel said these types of tactics hurt voter turnout and the democratic process in general.
“It is really sad for the election process,” she said in Toronto. “This doesn’t help people who don’t vote, to come back and believe in the election process.”
But Conservative MP Dean Del Mastro on Saturday said his party also was on the receiving end of such phone calls.
“My own campaign in Peterborough (Ont.) was the victim of dirty tricks phone calls, with Conservative supporters harassed by late-night abusive calls, and our party condemns these acts,”he said in a release.
“The Conservative party is calling on anyone with any information about harassing calls or calls giving inaccurate poll information to come clean immediately and hand it over to Elections Canada,” Del Mastro said.
“We call on Elections Canada to investigate and get to the bottom of this as quickly as possible so the truth is known,”he said.
Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath called the calls a “shameful” tactic that people would expect in the U.S. but not in Canadian politics.
“This is not the way to do politics . . . It’s about how do you trick somebody into doing something that will prevent them from voting,” she said at a meeting with the Ontario NDP provincial council. “If that is not an absolute insult to the ideal of democracy — I don’t know what is.”
On Friday, a young Conservative staffer reportedly resigned amid the growing scandal.
It’s unclear what role, if any, Micheal Sona, 23, may have played in this robocall ordeal.
Under the Elections Act, it is illegal to tell voters to go to a wrong or non-existent polling station.
A spokesperson for the Conservatives this week distanced the Tories from the scandal, saying that whoever initiated it did so alone.
<em>- With files from Stephen Maher and Jason Fekete, Postmedia News, and Glen McGregor, Ottawa Citizen</em>

He said government and industry need to prepare a common position to take to the Americans in 2017, in an effort to forge a continental energy and environmental agreement. “I don’t think we should be imposing emission cuts on the Canadian industrial sector until we have an agreement with the Americans, and they are imposing the same cuts on their companies.

“I became convinced of this when I was industry minister. All our economic modeling convinced me of the damage of imposing carbon charges on one side of the border and not the other. The damage is immediate and permanent,” he said.

Mr. Prentice said the benefits of the “energy revolution” will be felt far beyond the oil and gas industries.

NDP leader Tom Mulcair has suggested that the manufacturing has been afflicted by “Dutch disease,” where the dollar has been driven by commodity prices to a level where it is makes manufacturing uncompetitive. Mr. Prentice takes a contrary position, claiming manufacturing stands to benefit from the “re-shoring” of jobs, thanks to a plentiful supply of cheap natural gas.

He said energy-intensive industries like petrochemicals, heavy manufacturing, cement and fertilizers should be able to capitalize on the competitive advantage offered by cheap gas.

“At this point, we haven’t seen the re-shoring of jobs in Canada. But I think it will happen and the reduction in the value of the dollar will help,” he said.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-ivison-keystone-pipeline-not-likely-to-be-approved-until-after-obama-former-tory-minister-says/feed/0stdJim-Prentice-1Chris Roussakis/National PostJohn Ivison: Harper government open to mini-trade war to battle U.S. protectionismhttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-ivison-harper-government-open-to-mini-trade-war-to-battle-u-s-protectionism
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-ivison-harper-government-open-to-mini-trade-war-to-battle-u-s-protectionism#commentsThu, 14 Nov 2013 21:50:58 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=136058

Stephen Harper sounded like the mouse that roared when he said he “won’t take no for an answer” over President Barack Obama’s pending decision on the Keystone XL pipeline.

Like the old Peter Sellers’ movie of the same name, in which the bankrupt Duchy of Grand Fenwick declares war on the United States, in the hope of securing reconstruction funds once defeated, the suggestion was that Mr. Harper was just posturing.

Short of a Grand Fenwick-style invasion of New York, what could he do?

How about launching a mini-trade war? Or at the very least escalating a simmering trade dispute by barring American companies from bidding on the $53-billion in new infrastructure projects about to come on stream?

This is a very real possibility, sources suggest. Frustration has been bubbling among Canadian manufacturers for years over protectionism that excludes them from access to the American public sector procurement market, unless they have U.S. factories.

During the recession, the U.S. imposed “Buy American” requirements on its stimulus funding. An existing “Buy America” provision applied to the Department of Transportation for transit, highway and airport projects. Both provisions required spending to be directed toward domestic U.S. companies, or those with manufacturing facilities south of the border.

Canada got temporary relief from Buy American restrictions in an agreement reached with President Obama, but that deal ran out at the end of September and new bilateral talks have yet to take place.

To make matters worse, since the stimulus money ran out, Congress has become even more protectionist, applying Buy American provisions to more and more funding appropriation bills and infrastructure programs.

This uneven state of affairs has prompted the Canadian Manufacturers and Exporters organization, supported by the country’s steel producers, to write to four government ministers calling for Canada to retaliate — or in the honeyed language of trade negotiation, apply reciprocal measures.

In his letter, Jayson Myers, president of the CME, urged the government to use the $53-billion in pending infrastructure investment to “ensure that Canadian companies can compete on a fair and reciprocal basis against international competitors.”

He does not use the term “Buy Canadian” and would likely bristle at the thought of being considered anti-free trade.

But the clarion call is clearly for a limited trade war. As he points out, Canada offers open access to foreign bidders that is not reciprocated by countries like the U.S., China or Korea.

It is hardly news that a trade body representing exporters would advocate for more exports. What is new is the government’s appetite to consider retaliation.

Mr. Myers and a number of his members are set to meet with deputy ministers from the departments of Trade, Transport, Infrastructure and Public Works next Monday.

The pending Keystone decision is one reason why attitudes are hardening north of the border. The prevailing view in Ottawa is that Mr. Obama will be swayed more by the environmental crusade against the pipeline than the reasoned arguments of his closest ally.

Another factor is the ongoing negotiation over the Trans-Pacific Partnership between 12 countries that rim the Pacific, including Canada, the U.S., Japan and Australia.

Canada views the TPP as an opportunity to resolve the Buy American issue by including issues not covered by NAFTA, such as state and municipal procurement.

There is a feeling in Ottawa that Canada will never win an exemption from Buy American until U.S. companies like Nucor Corp., which bids on Canadian public projects, are locked out. The expectation is that they would then urge their government to exempt Canada.

To make matters worse, since the stimulus money ran out, Congress has become even more protectionist

Mel Svendsen, who owns automotive component manufacturer Standen’s Ltd. in Calgary, said he hopes that executives of the companies most vocally in favour of Buy American can work with their Canadian counterparts to build a free market.

At the same time, he sympathizes with producers who feel Canada is being sideswiped by provisions aimed at other countries like China. “We are certainly not an unfair trading partner,” he said.

Canadian prime ministers since the War have had three pre-eminent challenges – the economy, unity and the U.S.

Mr. Harper has muddled along unenthusiastically in his relations with the U.S., particularly since Mr. Obama became president. The Beyond the Border initiative may yet bear fruit but by any objective measure, the relationship is at a low ebb.

U.S.-Canada bilateral trade has slipped below the level of the 1990s; the border has thickened; there have been no efforts to broaden or deepen NAFTA; the powerful U.S. environmental lobby considers the oil sands ground zero in their war on carbon; Congress is openly protectionist and Canada is being locked out of key markets.

Mr. Harper has shown himself to rate fair trade above free trade. He may conclude he has little to lose by retaliating.

It seems that B.C. Premier Christy Clark, safely re-elected with a majority government, has seen the oil-powered light. Where once she had taken a hard line on the notion of Alberta’s petroleum crossing her province’s territory en route to Asian markets, Ms. Clark’s government is now focused on how to “get to yes” with Alberta.

The issue, of course, is pipelines. As Alberta’s oil production grows, it becomes harder to get all of it into the region’s already-overtaxed pipeline network. And so Alberta’s land-locked oil sells at a discount below world rates, because purchasers know that its selling options are limited. This is costing Alberta, and Canada, billions.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would take Alberta oil south to U.S. refineries, is caught up in regulatory consideration, awaiting a yay or nay from U.S. President Barack Obama. Pipelines to eastern Canadian ports are being considered for construction or retrofitting, but face local opposition. And the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline, which would run from near Edmonton to the B.C. coast, received a very cool reception from British Columbia.

Related

But that was before Ms. Clark’s surprise election victory earlier this year. Now that she’s been returned to office, B.C. has established a working group with Alberta to address B.C.’s concerns over the shipping of oil across its territory. While Alberta has refused Ms. Clark’s initial request for a share of Alberta’s royalty for each barrel of oil extracted from its territory, which was, Ms. Clark said, only fair given that B.C. would be shouldering most of the environmental risk of the pipeline, representatives from the two governments have begun regular meetings.

Earlier this month, they released the terms of reference for their working group, which states clearly that B.C. and Alberta will work together toward “opening new markets and expanding export opportunities for oil, gas and other resources” as well as “creating jobs and strengthening the economy of each province and Canada through the development of the oil and gas sector.” The terms of reference also note that “rail can be considered a viable alternative to [pipelines] … [if] pipelines are not developed, rail will step into the void to deliver bitumen to the West Coast.”

While somewhat obscured by the thick layer of bureaucratese, the meaning is clear: B.C. wants in on the economic development, no matter what oil-shipment technologies are used.

If B.C. is truly now willing to be a co-operative partner in the development of Alberta’s oil sands, this is positive news

Rail is indeed a “viable alternative” for oil shipments, but it is not without drawbacks. While generally safe, there is growing public unease about the shipment of petroleum products via rail. This hasn’t been helped by several high profile incidents, including this past summer’s devastating explosion in Lac-Megantic, Que., and this past weekend’s thankfully non-fatal derailment of a train carrying oil and propane near Gainford, Alta., whose residents, as of press time, were still prevented from returning to their homes due to an evacuation order.

Pipelines aren’t immune from accidents, but studies have shown they are safer than rail. If B.C. is truly now willing to be a co-operative partner in the development of Alberta’s oil sands, with all the benefits to the broader national economy that this would create, this is positive news. An even more positive development would be an agreement between provinces, and the relevant native bands whose lands would be crossed by Northern Gateway, to ship Alberta’s oil to global markets via pipeline. This would be the best outcome for Canada, for Alberta and for B.C.

WASHINGTON, July 27 — U.S. President Barack Obama called into question the number of jobs that would be created from the controversial Keystone XL pipeline in an interview with the New York Times released on Saturday.

“Republicans have said that this would be a big jobs generator,” Obama said, according to the newspaper.

“There is no evidence that that’s true. The most realistic estimates are this might create maybe 2,000 jobs during the construction of the pipeline, which might take a year or two, and then after that we’re talking about somewhere between 50 and 100 jobs in an economy of 150 million working people.”

TransCanada Corp’s proposed pipeline is designed to carry 830,000 barrels of crude oil per day from the Canadian oil sands and the Bakken shale in North Dakota and Montana south to refineries on the U.S. Gulf Coast. It would cost about $5.3 billion to build.

Obama’s administration is under pressure from Republicans and business groups to approve the project because of the economic benefits they say it will bring.

Environmentalists oppose the project because of the carbon pollution they say it would generate. Carbon emissions are blamed for contributing to global warming.

The project was first proposed in 2008 but is still making its way through a State Department study process.

The Times said Obama disputed an argument that the pipeline would bring down gasoline prices. He said it might actually increase prices somewhat in the U.S. Midwest, which would be able to ship more of its oil elsewhere in the world, the paper reported.

Obama said in June the project would serve U.S. interests only if it did not “significantly exacerbate” carbon pollution. The Times quoted him as saying that Canada could potentially be doing more to “mitigate carbon release.”
The administration’s final decision is expected later this year or early in 2014.

Over the past few decades, I held various management positions in both the private public sector, where I observed a deterioration in ethics, professionalism, innovation and problem solving. While the private sector has some mechanisms for self-correction, the public sector does not, leaving it dominated by soulless, incompetent managers who are more concerned with image than with effectiveness and problem solving.

A case in point is the recent flood in Calgary. After the last Alberta flood in 2005, which I intimately experienced, what did our leadership do? Nothing that mattered. An effective manager would call a bunch of hydrologists, urban planners and other experts and ask them for blueprint for infrastructure improvement. That did not happen. It took close to six years to get a committee report.

With this year’s flood, our Premier made some motherhood statements and threw money at the problem, before patting herself on the back. The only sight of some managerial leadership was from Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who came to see but then decently stayed out of the way and from Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi, who passed on some practical advice to citizens.

In a meantime, many citizens started to ignore the “managers.” I was cooped out at home, without power or Internet, listening to our managers on an old transistor radio, hoping for a bit of useful information. None came, but just the message: “Trust us we know what we are doing!”

In Canada, our public sector management is full of itself, too slow to act, devoid of common sense, totally adverse to failure and hugely expensive. No wonder our democracy suffers. We must demand better.

At some point in my managerial career, I decided to call it quits as a manager and become a shopkeeper. A great decision, I must add.

Alec M. Bialski, Calgary.

The picture accompanying this story, “Canada has become a nation of managers,” shows seven university graduates carrying their diplomas — and six of the seven are female. Hmmm, is something wrong with this picture?

David Saul, Toronto.

Re: Comedian’s Appeal Falls Flat, June 24.

After reading about the woman at the comedy club who is “to receive five figures in damages from a comedian whose performance she alleges gave her post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD),” I feel that my voice needed to be heard.

I have PTSD (actually I have complex-PTSD to be exact) and it took way, way more than someone swearing at me and giving me a shove to be diagnosed. I’m considered a victim of torture. I suffered for over 15 years, I’ve also been raped and held hostage at knife point for over six hours.

I’m in a support group. Most of the women there have PTSD and have suffered rape, been physically assaulted for years, were sexually assaulted as children or have seen war conditions or death as a result of a natural disaster.

This bar patron, who claims to developed PTSD after having suffered “ ’lasting physical and psychological effects’ after [a comedian] directed a string of lesbian slurs at her,” makes a mockery out of a very serious illness. Having generalized anxiety disorder is serious, but you cannot say you have PTSD with a straight face in this circumstance. Her life was never in danger: that is one of the criteria for being diagnosed with the disease.

She makes people like me, and those in my support group, seem less legitimate. Shame on her.

K. Murphy, Mississauga, Ont.

Obama should just approve Keystone

U.S. President Barack Obama this week said he would approve the Keystone XL project only if the net effect of the project “does not significantly exacerbate the problem of carbon pollution.” His hypocrisy in pretending to consider the merits of the project, while catering to the environmentalists on the left, should be clear to all.

We need to put the proposed Keystone XL pipeline in the context of overall oil pipeline construction in the United States. According to the Oil and Gas Journal, in 2013, more than 4,000 miles of crude oil and refined petroleum products pipeline will be built in the United States. More will be built next year. The Keystone pipeline, if approved, would be only a tiny part of that. The Interstate Natural Gas Association of America, in its 2013 report on the economic impacts of pipeline construction, estimated the total economic impacts of new oil and natural gas pipeline projects will be immense: $260-billion in value added, $511-billion in total output and $117-billion in labour income over the period to 2035.

If Mr. Obama were to apply the conditions he placed on Keystone to other pipelines, there would be hell to pay from those Americans affected.

As Tim Ball, a former professor of climatology, has pointed out in an article at the American Thinker website, Barack Obama’s climate change speech is riddled with errors about manmade global warming, which has stalled for the last 15 years despite significant increases in GHG emissions.

Therefore there is no need for controlling CO2 emissions through carbon tax or trading and PM Harper should desist in introducing such regulations, which will eventually increase poverty and the ability of the poor in developing countries from improving their living conditions. Instead, Canada should set up a clean coal energy technology program that can be offered to the poor countries in Asia and Africa.

Jiti Khanna, Vancouver.

While the Oracle at Delphi in ancient Greece was famous for ambiguously phrased prophecies which could show her in a good light regardless of outcome, Barack Obama’s attempts at describing his ambiguous Keystone XL pipeline review process currently show him as a spiritual oracle, who, fearing his own environmental base, appears unable to make an overdue decision.

Mr. Obama’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline to southern U.S. refineries will facilitate the export of the (largely) land-locked third largest proven oil reserves in the world.

The environmentally responsible development of Alberta’s oil sands, facilitated by the construction of Keystone XL, is in the best long-term interests of both the U.S. and Canada.

Ron Johnson, Victoria.

Barack Obama’s postponement of the Keystone XL Pipeline decision opens up a tremendous opportunity for Canada to process its own oil, sell it to our Eastern provinces or other countries. It’s a no-brainer. In Ontario, Dalton McGuinty has already shown us the awful results of green energy sources. Why look a gift horse in the mouth?

I enjoyed reading this column very much, as it made me reflect on my own handwriting.

Writing in longhand forces me to concentrate harder on the choice of words to make a point. However, I wonder whether to truly free one’s brain creatively, it might be even better to dictate aloud to someone. I recall stories about Leo Tolstoy and others relying on a spouse or amanuensis for this purpose. In some cases this probably did not lead to a very happy home life. This inconvenience has now been overcome with voice recognition technology. On this count handwriting remains in peril.

I was totally aghast when I discovered that despite putting my daughter through private school, she could not write a full sentence in cursive on a piece of paper upon graduating junior high. But I was even more distraught in addressing this with the head administrator responsible for academic excellence, who put me down for being so outdated by my expectations in her ability to do so. The administrator proudly admitted that as an adult, she personally couldn’t write anything more than her signature on a piece of paper.

Prescription notes from doctors are a classic example of how academically smart kids can be so dumb when it comes to penmanship.

Besides a poor reflection on a professional self-image and the possibility of killing patients, dropping cursive can “cut you off from your ancestors” by cutting you off from the beauty of the language itself, as Andrew Coyne contests.

Rather than dropping cursive, I would argue for its reinstatement into a “bilingual” written curriculum. There is no question that knowing computer skills today is critical. But knowing computer typing skills along with cursive gives you the edge over those who are limited to computer typing. — even in this modern age of social media.

Chris Selley’s comment that if Edmonton had experienced a disastrous flood such as the one from which Calgary is now recovering, Alberta’s capital city would be “a smoking hole in the ground at this point, infested with twitchy-eyed, machete-wielding savages,” is an example of totally irresponsible journalism. I am not amused.

The National Post has insulted my city and insulted me. Edmontonians and Calgarians may be adversaries on the hockey rink and on the football field, but otherwise we are all Albertans in two fine cities who share each other’s triumphs and tragedies.

Edmonton has been generous not only in prayers for Calgarians and others affected by the massive flooding in southern Alberta, but in donations of hundreds of thousands of dollars from corporations and citizens. In the past few days I have heard prayers from the pulpit, and attended a musical performance in which the hat was passed for financial relief of Calgarians. In minutes, $1,070 was contributed, not much in terms of the cost of flooding damage, but it all adds up and supports agencies such as the Red Cross in tireless efforts to help Calgarians.

Normally I enjoy reading the Post over breakfast. On Thursday, you have left a bad taste in my mouth.

John Chalmers, Edmonton.

Editor’s note: “Chris Selley’s comment was made in jest. It was meant to gently make light of the Calgary Herald editorial board’s characterization of ‘southern Alberta’.”

As George Jonas says, democracy is “just a way of arranging governmental succession … but it’s no cure for social problems” and suggests that the Egyptian opposition would do well to understand the difference. The point can also be put like this: Democracy is the product of political idealism (all about the power to make the rules, etc.) and not social idealism — what kind of society do we want.

One would think that political forms and procedures, as the social infrastructure of a society, must, barring extreme situations (war, etc.) have priority. Often we get our priorities wrong — just look at the politically catastrophic results of the Russian or, more recently, the Cuban revolutions.

So, yes, the Egyptian opposition has to ask the right questions and choose the right priorities: Are their essential democratic rights, and indeed the next election, actually in jeopardy?

Federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has praised Alberta Premier Alison Redford for her efforts to get the United States to approve the Keystone XL pipeline.

But Trudeau said Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s government hasn’t done enough to push the project.

“This (federal) government hasn’t done a very good job of reassuring either Canadians or our trading partners that we are serious about managing environmental sustainability,” Trudeau told reporters after shaking hands with commuters at a downtown subway station early Friday.

“This is the kind of thing we need strong leadership on, and I’m pleased to see Premier Redford taking such a strong and balanced position on that.”

The $7-billion TransCanada line would take oilsands crude from Alberta across the U.S. Midwest to coastal refineries in Texas. Labour and industry representatives say the line is crucial to secure a reliable source of oil.

U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to make a decision soon on the fate of the proposed project.

Redford has made numerous trips to Washington to remind decision makers of Keystone’s economic benefits and to highlight Canada’s environmental record. She has said Alberta charges heavy emitters $15 a tonne for greenhouse gas emissions over set limits and finances many green-energy projects. Critics, however, say the province isn’t close to meeting its long-term greenhouse gas reduction targets.

The proposed line has faced sharp criticism from environmentalists in Canada and the United States. Protesters have gathered by the thousands in Washington to say pipelines in general are not safe for the environment, and Keystone should be the line in the sand if industry is to move away from such carbon-intensive operations as the oilsands.

I’m very hopeful despite the political games being played by the NDP … that we will see the Keystone pipeline approved soon

Federal NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair travelled to Washington in March to criticize Canada’s environmental record and the pipeline. He has said he’d rather see an Alberta pipeline go east to Canadian refineries than south to create jobs in the United States alone.

Trudeau said Mulcair has not been helpful.

“I’m very hopeful despite the political games being played by the NDP … that we will see the Keystone pipeline approved soon,” said Trudeau.

Trudeau is on his first western swing since he became Liberal leader last month.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/news/trudeau-praises-redford-for-keystone-xl-efforts-slams-harper-for-not-pushing-critical-project/feed/7stdLiberal party leader Justin Trudeau, on his first Western trip as leader, greets people in a food court in downtown Winnipeg, Thursday, May 2, 2013Jesse Kline: Carbon tax inflation is not the answer to Alberta's issueshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kline-on-a-carbon-tax
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kline-on-a-carbon-tax#commentsWed, 17 Apr 2013 12:00:29 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=113095

There was a time, not long ago, when governments offered massive subsidies and invested huge sums of public money to spur the development of Alberta’s oil sands. It’s good that many of these subsidies have been phased out, but it still costs more to produce a barrel of oil from the oil sands, than from conventional sources, which makes the Alberta government’s push to increase the cost of doing business in the province a troubling proposition.

Alberta already has a carbon tax that charges large industrial emitters $15 per tonne of carbon produced over its 12% intensity-reduction target — a measure of CO2 emissions relative to the size of the economy. Recent reports indicate the provincial government could be getting ready to double down on the tax by instituting a 40/40 rule, whereby emitters would be charged $40/tonne if they don’t meet a 40% intensity-reduction target.

This would not only increase the cost of doing business in the oil sands, it would also raise the price of power and make Alberta a less attractive place for large industrial facilities of all kinds. Before going down this road, the Redford government should take stock of what the current program has achieved, and what it hopes to accomplish by increasing taxes on an industry that is the driving force behind the provincial economy.

Regardless of whether man-made CO2 emissions are contributing to global warming, the oil sands account for just 7% of Canada’s emissions and a mere 0.15% of the global total. And, as P.J. O’Rourke wrote in his book Don’t Vote, “There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick. [They] want a hot plate and a piece of methane-emitting cow to cook on it. They want a carbon-belching moped, and some CO2-disgorging heat in the houses in the winter. And air-conditioning wouldn’t be considered an imposition.” In other words, emerging economies such as China and India want all the creature comforts we take for granted and “There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

The real reason behind the push to increase Alberta’s carbon tax has less to do with the environment, and more to do with politics. With Canada’s oil producers waiting on a decision over whether the Keystone XL pipeline will be approved, policymakers have been searching for a way to allow U.S. President Barack Obama to give the project the go-ahead, while offering assurances to environmentalists that steps are being taken to reduce the environmental impact of the oil sands.

If an increase in the carbon tax paved the way for increased pipeline capacity, it would be a small price to pay. But without assurances from the Obama administration that approval will be given in exchange for the tax, Alberta’s oil industry could be left with higher taxes and no way to get its product to market — a combination that could devastate the industry, and the Canadian economy.

A 2006 National Energy Board of Canada report estimated that it costs between $9 and $14 to extract a barrel of bitumen from the oil sands, compared to less than $1 in Iraq and Saudi Arabia, and $6 in the U.S. Add transportation, refining and high upfront capital costs, and a barrel of oil sands crude can cost upwards of $40. The cost of mining the oil sands has nearly tripled over the past 15 years, far outpacing inflation, and large producers such as Suncor and Shell have already announced plans to scale back their investment in the region.

Suncor recently abandoned its target of producing one million barrels by 2020, and looks likely to shelve a half-built oil sands facility. A Shell spokeswoman likewise told The Globe and Mail in March that the industry has plenty of investment opportunities around the world. “We have resources that we want to unlock. But we need to make sure it’s competitive,” she said. Increasing the carbon tax would make the oil sands less competitive, and Alberta needs the oil industry more than the industry needs the province.

Another problem is that the revenue collected from the current carbon tax goes into a green-technology investment fund, which has been quite ineffective. The Climate Change and Emissions Management Corp. — which manages funds collected from the tax — has invested $181-million in 49 projects, which are expected to reduce carbon emissions by seven million tonnes over 10 years. That works out to $258 per tonne, which is higher than existing green-energy technologies, such as wind, solar and nuclear.

From a free-market perspective, a carbon tax could be used as a way to compensate property owners for environmental damages caused by large emitters. But this would mean creating a revenue-neutral system, whereby the money collected from the carbon tax is offset from the taxes that Albertans pay, rather than using the money to pick winners and losers in the marketplace.

Increasing the carbon tax as part of negotiations with the Obama administration could be a win-win for environmentalists, politicians and the industry. But doing so unilaterally would cause more harm to Canada’s economy than it is actually worth.

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]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/kline-on-a-carbon-tax/feed/0stdoil_sandsDoug Lamborn: Keystone XL is right for Canada; right for the United Stateshttp://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/doug-lamborn-keystone-xl-is-right-for-canada-right-for-the-united-states
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/doug-lamborn-keystone-xl-is-right-for-canada-right-for-the-united-states#commentsFri, 22 Mar 2013 04:01:19 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=109803

Canada and the United States are each other’s most important trading partners, share a 5,500-mile border, and have close ties in culture, language and values. We are vital allies and friends.

In 2010, our bilateral trade was close to $645-billion, which means more than $1.7-billion worth of goods and services cross the Canada-U.S. border every single day. Canada is the United States’ largest supplier of crude oil and refined products, natural gas, electricity and uranium. It is especially important to the U.S. that Canada has always been a reliable and secure energy supplier.

Today, the Keystone XL Pipeline offers a unique and promising opportunity for our two countries to deepen our partnership. The pipeline will carry heavy crude oil from oil-sands formations in Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Last year, a bill I sponsored passed the U.S. House of Representatives, the PIONEERS Act. It would have required the President to green-light the extension of the pipeline into the U.S.

Just last week, the U.S. State Department released another environmental impact study finding that big-picture environmental concerns — such as those related to greenhouse gases and global warming — are irrelevant, on the grounds that Canada’s oil sands eventually will be developed and made into burnable fuel in any scenario. Moreover, transporting oil sand products by truck, rail or ship leaves a larger carbon footprint than a pipeline route.

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A few weeks before that, the governor of Nebraska gave his approval to a revised route for the pipeline that avoids sensitive lands and aquifers in his state. Within days of his approval, a majority of the U.S. Senate sent a letter to President Barack Obama urging speedy federal approval. “There’s no reason to deny or further delay this long-studied project,” the Senators said.

House Speaker John Boehner summed up the situation when he said, “There is no bureaucratic excuse, hurdle, or catch [that] President Obama can use to delay this project any further. He and he alone stands in the way of tens of thousands of new jobs and energy security.”

Americans, through a majority of their elected representatives in both the House and the Senate, along with key governors, want this pipeline built. In siding with a relatively small number of radical environmentalists, President Obama is alone and out of step with the rest of the country and with Canada.

Keystone XL is the most studied cross-border pipeline ever proposed. It will create thousands of high-paying jobs in both of our countries.

A study last year by the independent Congressional Research Service found that the greenhouse-gas emissions from energy produced from Canadian oil sands delivered by the pipeline would have virtually no impact on the rate of global warming. It would increase it by an infinitesimal 0.00001 degrees Celsius per year.

We who support the Keystone XL Pipeline believe the expansion of oil sands will happen anyway, with or without the pipeline. Canadians are not foolish. You are not going to simply lock up a valuable resource and throw away the key. If the oil is not used in the U.S., it will be used in places like China.

Canada is a valued ally and partner not only in energy security, but national security, as well. My congressional district in Colorado is home to the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) — a joint mission between our countries to provide strategic defence to North America.

A majority of the American people and American politicians want to build on that strong relationship and our mutual interests by extending the Keystone XL Pipeline into America. President Obama is the only one who hasn’t gotten the memo.

National Post

U.S. Congressman Doug Lamborn, Republican of Colorado Springs, is chairman of the House Natural Resources Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/doug-lamborn-keystone-xl-is-right-for-canada-right-for-the-united-states/feed/0stdBarack ObamaMultiple levels of government in Canada come together for all out Keystone pipeline lobbying blitz in U.S.http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/multiple-levels-of-government-in-canada-come-together-for-all-out-keystone-pipeline-lobbying-blitz-in-u-s
http://news.nationalpost.com/news/canada/multiple-levels-of-government-in-canada-come-together-for-all-out-keystone-pipeline-lobbying-blitz-in-u-s#commentsTue, 05 Mar 2013 18:45:54 +0000http://news.nationalpost.com/?p=276529

WASHINGTON – As the decision on the Keystone XL pipeline nears, Canadian governments have launched an intense lobbying campaign in the United States designed to persuade influential American politicians and industrial leaders that the pipeline is vital for U.S. security and economic interests and is also an environmentally responsible energy source.

The goal is to counter the rising influence of environmental groups such as the prominent Sierra Club and 350.org, whose leaders have lobbied vigorously to try to kill the 1,800-kilometre pipeline that will transport oilsands bitumen from Alberta and shale oil from Montana and North Dakota to Texas refineries.

Environmentalists have succeeded in changing the debate from one of purely economic and energy security issues to the environment, forcing Canada to justify its record on boreal forest destruction and on greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions.

Joe Oliver, Canada’s natural resources minister, is in Chicago Tuesday and in Houston Wednesday, where he will speak to the IHS Cambridge Energy Research Associates’ annual conference.

Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is in Washington this week where he will meet with more than a dozen senators and representatives from both parties plus State Department officials.

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Those visits follow trips to Washington last month by Alberta Premier Alison Redford and Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird.

U.S. President Barack Obama will make the final decision on Keystone, which is not expected before the summer. By law he must base it on the broadly flexible idea of U.S. national interests.

This is one reason Oliver’s first stop in his U.S. tour was Chicago, which is in Obama’s home state and a powerful Democrat power-base.

In a speech to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, he outlined the economic advantages and environmental record of the oilsands.

“The development of new oil sands projects will generate more jobs in Illinois than any other state,” he said, adding “570,000 person years of employment will be created over the next 25 years in Illinois.”

Oliver later met with Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s former chief of staff and a close political ally. He said he discussed how “Canadian oil represents an environmentally responsible contributor to jobs and growth in Chicago and throughout Illinois.”

Oliver told the Council on Global Affairs he came to Chicago to correct the “false information about the oilsands” spread by opponents of oilsands expansion and “give you the unvarnished goods.”

He said the oilsands have attracted about $160 billion in investment because it is a “free enterprise” opportunity in a world where 80 per cent of oil reserves are state controlled.

“That is why so many U.S. companies have invested heavily in the oilsands,” he said.

“America needs oil and Canada has an abundance of it,” he said. “It only makes sense to work together toward our common goals of improving the environment, growing the economy and strengthening our common security.”

He said the oilsands “are subject to some of the most stringent environmental regulations and monitoring in the world.”

He added that when it comes to GHG emissions, the oilsands crude travelling through the Keystone XL would represent “less than one two-thousandths of global emissions.”

“It would therefore have no discernible impact on global greenhouse gas emissions,” he said.

Canada, he said, is progressing on reducing GHG emissions. Between 2005 and 2010, the Canadian economy grew but its GHG missions declined and the country is “halfway to meeting” its Copenhagen Accord goals to reduce emissions by 17 percent from 2005 levels by 2020, he said.

He added a not-so-veiled warning that unless Keystone is built, Canada will continue to development pipelines that will bring its oil to “new customers,” opening “the door for Canadian crude to growing markets in Asia.”

Finally, he chastised environmental groups and “movie stars” for turning the Keystone into a “symbolic issue in their larger battle against the development of hydrocarbons and specifically the oilsands.”

“Keystone could enable a future that sees the U.S. virtually eliminate its reliance on less reliable and less environmentally responsible foreign sources,” he concluded. “With Canada able to supply all of the U.S.’s future imported oil needs and the energy sector in the U.S. continually growing, together we can achieve North American energy independence by 2035.”

WASHINGTON — The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency resigned abruptly last week, reportedly to protest the Obama administration’s apparent plans to approve TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline in the coming months.

The American environmental movement is abuzz following a New York Post report that Lisa Jackson suddenly quit the post because she doesn’t want to be at the helm of the agency when the White House rubber-stamps the controversial project.

That could happen as early as March or April, the paper suggested.

“She was going to stay on until November or December,” a source close to Jackson told the New YorkPost.

“But this changed it. She will not be the EPA head when Obama supports [Keystone XL] getting built.”

The EPA is one of several federal agencies that’s been advising the Obama administration on the $7-billion pipeline, a project that would carry millions of barrels of crude a week from Alberta’s carbon-intensive oilsands to the U.S. Gulf Coast.

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The ultimate decision on Keystone XL’s fate rests with the State Department, since the pipeline crosses an international border.

Jackson is Obama’s top environmental adviser, appointed head of the agency soon after his inauguration in 2008. Over the past four years, she’s pushed through the toughest new air and water pollution rules in more than 20 years and has frequently spoken out on climate change.

Under her watch, the EPA has also raised serious concerns about Keystone XL.

In July 2010, as TransCanada awaited a decision from the White House on the pipeline, the EPA sent a letter to the State Department calling its draft environmental assessment of the project “inadequate.”

It chastised analysts for failing to address the greenhouse gas emissions associated with Keystone XL. The letter also urged the State Department to further examine pipeline safety and spill-response planning, as well as the impact on Canadian native communities.

In October 2011, Jackson reiterated those concerns in an appearance at Howard University in Washington.

“This isn’t a little tiny pipeline, this is a pipeline that cuts our country literally in half,” she said.

Obama rejected the pipeline early last year, but invited TransCanada to file a new application with an altered route that would skirt Nebraska’s ecologically sensitive Sand Hills region.

TransCanada did so, and is now awaiting word on approval from the State Department after getting the all-clear from the state of Nebraska.

Pipeline advocates say the project will create much-needed jobs in the U.S. Midwest, and help end American dependence on oil from hostile OPEC regimes.

In the statement announcing her resignation, the EPA said Jackson wanted to “pursue new challenges, time with her family and new opportunities.”

Jackson has been a “javelin-catcher on a million issues,” the source said.

Being head of the environmental watchdog is a thankless job, because “Congress hates the EPA,” the source added.

“There’s a joke that she has her own parking space on Capitol Hill because she’s here so often getting beaten up on so many issues.”

There’s a joke that she has her own parking space on Capitol Hill because she’s here so often getting beaten up on so many issues

The real threat to Keystone, the source added, could be John Kerry, expected to soon be easily confirmed America’s new secretary of state following Hillary Clinton’s resignation.

Kerry is one of the most vocal climate change hawks in Congress, and has long stressed the need for the U.S. to combat its addiction to fossil fuels. His nomination by Obama has delighted American environmentalists.

In October 2011, Kerry, the head of the U.S. Senate’s foreign relations committee, vowed that no stone would remain unturned as senators examined the environmental impact of Keystone XL.

“There’s a lot at stake here and I’ll do my best to leave no question unanswered including every possible economic and environmental consideration before a final decision is made,” he said in a statement.

Keystone XL places the longtime Massachusetts senator in a quandary.

“He doesn’t want to start off as the top diplomat of the country angering Canada,” the source said. “But there’s no question that a Kerry State Department is not going to be helpful in terms of Keystone.”

Shawn Howard, a spokesman for TransCanada, said the company is prepared to arm both Kerry and Jackson’s eventual replacement with as much information as possible, pointing specifically to Nebraska’s recent thumb’s up to Keystone XL’s new route.

“We will work with Secretary Clinton’s successor, as well as Ms. Jackson’s, to provide them with the information that is required for a decision to be made on our presidential permit application,” he said.

Oil: it’s an imposing and multi-faceted topic, into whose orbit come geopolitical intrigue, war and empire building. Oil fuels our modern industrial comforts and conveniences, as well as our controversies. In many parts of the petroleum-rich world — Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Nigeria — it has engendered violence and state corruption. A blessing of mixed character, oil production and its inevitable politics have arrived on a massive scale to Canada, most of it in the form of bitumen. Civil war and autocracy are unlikely in this democratic, rule-of-law nation, but don’t expect a smooth journey. There are battles ahead, and the evidence suggests Canada is ill-prepared both for its scope and scale.

Canada’s extraction industry long predates the automobile, its roots extending into the nation’s agricultural era. The conventional beginning is 1858, at Black Creek, near present-day London. In a time of drought, the petroleum refiner and entrepreneur James Miller Williams dug for water near his asphalt well, discovering instead North America’s first commercial oil deposit. The chance find attracted others, and soon the town was renamed Oil Springs and an industry was well underway.

For decades since, Canada has produced a variety of energy products, from coal and crude to liquid natural gas and nuclear power. Industry-produced maps reveal a continent thickly decorated with wells, mines, pipelines, waterways and railroads, from which issue the country’s massive supply of natural resources. A literal turning-point arrived in March of 2006, when the Calgary-based pipeline-and-storage company Enbridge reversed the flow of its Spearhead pipeline, bringing Alberta’s oil sands product south to Oklahoma in place of the Gulf of Mexico oil that had been moving north. Those who were paying attention did not fail to see the significance: Canada was now a major international presence in the petroleum industry.

Less than two years earlier, Canada’s daily oil sands crude production — which today is 2.8 million barrels — surpassed one million. Behind only Saudi Arabia and Venezuela in the volume of its oil reserves, Canada was long hindered by the high cost of accessing and extracting the thick bitumen which constitutes ninety-seven percent of its known energy reserves. As the technology of oil sands extraction improved, and as the costs of conventional crude rose, the economics of the oil sands went from liability to asset. Canada is now the world’s largest exporter of crude oil to the United States, and the sixth largest oil producer. With global demand expected to double in the next two decades, and with the country’s productive capacity expanding year by year, Canada’s energy’s prospects are bright.

The dark spot in this prospect is the apparent lack of foresight among the country’s political leaders. The current Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has been an eager promoter of the oil sands and of the petroleum industry in general, bringing industry representatives to China and hosting the many Chinese delegations keen to do business in Canada’s energy sector. In the meantime, issues of domestic concern languish, and the federal government appears overly confident in its ability to heavy-hand its way through the process. Recent Chinese bids to acquire oil sands assets have exposed the federal government’s lack of a clear and public position on foreign ownership. The Harper government, most notably the Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, speaks often of the national interest in promoting the oil sands, but in unspecified terms which only underscore the policy vacuum. In an irony missed by few, Oliver dismissed critics of foreign ownership as being themselves the agents of American special interests. Lost in the exchange has been a nation-building discussion of the real-world policy challenges and opportunities this blessing of potential riches presents.

Enbridge has had a difficult month. President Al Monaco has had to address a scathing report on the Kalamzoo river spill by the U.S. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Enbridge’s shares and finances have recently done well, so much so that at the end of July the company announced its highest earnings since June of 1983. Despite this, or even because of it, the company has a tough public relations challenge ahead. Oil companies are an easy and popular target. The tone of an August 3 Enbridge statement suggests the careful mood of the company, which these days is walking a PR tight rope: “Enbridge operates the largest and most complex liquids pipeline system in the world. We’re proud of what we do – helping to provide reliable energy to many millions of people across North America every single day. Over the last decade we’ve transported almost 12 billion barrels of crude oil with a safe delivery record better than 99.999 per cent. That’s good, but for us, it’s not good enough. We will never stop striving for 100 per cent.” Nor should they, given that this .0001 percent represents international headline news and additional speaking points for opponents. An oil spill is like an airline crash: citations of statistics do precious little to soften the human and ecological tragedy, both of which are real — as Enbridge well knows. “One spill is too many” may be the only point on which all are agreed.

“It is the moment in Aboriginal law,” says Merle Alexander. He is an Aboriginal Law specialist with the Vancouver firm Bull Housser, a member of the Kitasoo Xai’xais First Nation, and a keen observer of the developing storm. “This will be unprecedented: Aboriginal rights and title, under Section 35 of the Constitution Act, will compete with what has been politically deemed the national interest. It’s a battle we’ve never seen, and it will unite all Aboriginal peoples.” Mention of the constitution is certain to provoke Canadians, but Alexander’s observation does not end with a dispute between First Nations and the Crown. “With British Columbia’s objections, you don’t just have Section 35 behind the opposition — you also have Section 92. Two of the constitutional partners are resisting the third, pushing back on the idea of federal paramouncy. This is going to be quite a battle.”

The questions arise: if observers like Merle Alexander are correct, will the public be informed about, and prepared for, what approaches? Will legal and political institutions yield workable resolutions, or will the system break down to the detriment of society and the economy? With billions of dollars of economic activity and with Aboriginal land and title rights depending upon the outcome, the oil sands dispute is a matter of high stakes for all involved. The mainstream media often cast the battle as a conflict between commerce and environmentalism — between the advocates of growth and capitalism, on the one hand, and the advocates of sustainability and a lighter carbon footprint on the other. This however misses a critical portion of reality.

“People say that we British Columbians are a bunch of enviros,” notes Art Sterritt. A Gitxsan, he’s the executive director of the Coastal First Nations, the person mandated to speak on behalf of the coastal communities affected by the Northern Gateway proposal. He explains that the opposition to the pipeline and increased tanker traffic is rooted in economic realities. “One of the things people don’t understand is we’re a have province. We don’t need revenue from oil. It’s not like we don’t have an economy that is sustainable. There are over 30,000 jobs on the coast that depend on a healthy environment. It doesn’t make sense for British Columbians to jeopardize that in order to change our culture to one that depends on oil. First Nations are not anti-development either. There’s major stuff going on here, like the LNG [liquid natural gas] projects that are being embraced by almost all First Nations. Sure, there are impacts — but they’re not catastrophic They can be managed.”

First Nations are not only managing: increasingly they are managers, as well as Presidents and CEOs. While Canadians debate topics ranging from global warming to the threat of foreign ownership, Aboriginal business leaders are busy making resource deals around the world. B.C. coastal nations sell raw hemlock to the Chinese, and one of them – Coast Tsimshian Resources – now has a Beijing office. The Assembly of First Nations undertakes periodical overseas trade missions, promoting partnerships and leasing deals directly with international oil and mineral investors. Earlier this year, the Six Nations based tobacco company Grand River Enterprises agreed to sell $30 million worth of tobacco leaf to China. They have plans to expand into Pakistan. First Nation Grain Management is in the export business, expecting to ship fifty thousand tons of grain to China later this year. These business deals have become so commonplace that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service monitors their development carefully.

They are not the only ones watching. Politicians south of the U.S.-Canada border are also concerned about China’s appetite for North American resources, especially in the Canadian oil sands. While much of the expressed fear in the United States and elsewhere is doubtless a case of political posturing, uncertainty over Chinese objectives (beyond the obvious one, fueling of their industrial expansion) and a lack of clear domestic energy policies make the way clear for nervous speculation. Eighty percent of the world’s oil reserves are government controlled, in many instances by closed and authoritarian regimes. Of the remaining twenty percent, Canada has over one-half — in the oil sands. It’s worth investigating the risks should this precious resource pass into the control of the oligarchs who populate the People’s Republic of China. On this question the federal government of Canada has been silent, but critics note that its actions suggest indifference to the concern. “Stephen Harper has a dream,” speculates Merle Alexander. “It’s likely to make Canada one of the economic super powers.” But at what cost?

Anticipating the obstacles to its energy ambitions, the federal government pushed forward with a broad reconstitution of Canada’s environmental laws. Introduced in June as an omnibus budget bill, C-38 introduced, amended or repealed seventy federal laws, among them the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. C-38 provided the federal cabinet authority to override decisions of the National Energy Board and to reject or amend the rulings of the Joint Review Panel which is currently hearing evidence on the Enbridge Northern Gateway proposal from First Nations. The bill reduces protection for fish and fish habitats and tellingly exempts pipelines from the Navigable Waters Act, thereby reducing protection for species at risk. “The legal battle will most definitely include attacking C-38,” asserts lawyer Merle Alexander.

That there will be a battle in this country no one appears to doubt. There is far too much money to be made, and far too much breakdown of trust among the respective parties. The only uncertainties are the character of the fight — whether matters will be sorted out in the courts or on the ground, by means of law and negotiation or raw power politics. “Enbridge ignores the opposition,” says Art Sterritt. “And we understand now why they do: the Prime Minister has told them he’s going to deliver this. This gives them the confidence to keep going.” Likewise, the opposition of British Columbians, which polls suggest is well above fifty percent, gives First Nations the confidence to contemplate not only lawsuits but blockades. The province, which is a steward of the world’s longest coastline and its largest temperate rainforest, is not likely to yield without a fight. The battle lines having been drawn, a sleepy summertime nation lumbers toward the inevitable.

]]>http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/wayne-k-spear-ottawas-policy-vacuum-undermines-its-oil-sands-rhetoric/feed/0stdpipeline protestMatt Gurney: If a U.S. president insulted Canada, would we care anymore?http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/matt-gurney-if-a-u-s-president-insulted-canada-would-we-care-anymore
http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/matt-gurney-if-a-u-s-president-insulted-canada-would-we-care-anymore#commentsTue, 26 Jun 2012 13:34:21 +0000http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/?p=83031

Derek Burney, a Conservative stalwart, long-serving diplomat and former Canadian ambassador to Washington, has co-written an essay in the influential U.S. journal Foreign Affairs. In it, readers are presented with a veritable laundry list of ways that the U.S. has slighted — or “jilted,” if you prefer — it’s northern ally during the administration of U.S. president Barack Obama.

You can’t say the essay is wrong. From Keystone XL to Buy America provisions in the stimulus packages developed by Congress, the U.S. has found occasion over the last few years to irritate Canada. But notably absent has been the kind of heated Canadian rhetoric you’d hear as recently as the Paul Martin era during the softwood lumber dispute. Nor does the Canadian public seem to be demonstrating much of the reflexive anti-Americanism that has always been a strange part of our national character.

We’ve long insisted that the U.S. treat us as a separate and sovereign country, and yet react with wounded outrage when they treat us as a separate country. Go figure. But given that Burney and his co-author are right, and America has repeatedly slighted Canada … and if we can agree that Canadians don’t seem particularly freaked out about it … good Lord, could it be that Canadians are, gulp, growing up?

It’s not that Canada and the U.S. don’t remain, as the essay in Foreign Affairs says, “joined at the hip.” It’s hard to imagine two nations that enjoy closer ties. Such ties with the U.S. is probably the single greatest blessing — geopolitical fluke, really — in our history.

But it can’t be denied that there certainly is an unusual dynamic at play in the bilateral relationship right now. While the U.S. is hobbled by military overreach, political dysfunction and continued economic weakness, things in Canada are … pretty good. There are problems, and it would be a mistake for Canadians to get complacent.

Still, Canadians have had plenty of occasion these last few years to look south and feel profound relief. Our big, cocky brother, always so loud and proud with their aircraft carriers and moon landings and MTV, is struggling. There is little reason to expect that’ll be turning around anytime soon. Any Canadian who truly wishes for their own country to prosper should hit their knees nightly in prayer for a strong U.S. recovery, but until that happens, perhaps the reason for a sudden apparent relaxing of the typical Canadian inferiority complex vis a vis the United States is simply that, given the state of the two nations, it’s hard for Canadians to look south and feel all that inferior.

That’s a good thing. It’d be better if it reflected a maturing of the Canadian collective identity rather than a fairly objective assessment of the economic and political disaster the Americans have inflicted upon themselves, but we’ll take it. Yes, the U.S. has done any number of things that should annoy Canada of late, but in contrast to eras past … we’re dealing with it just fine.

Maybe we’re just deferring a later freakout. Take Keystone XL, for example. The relatively calm response that its suspension provoked in Canada may be partially due to us believing, deep down, that it’ll happen eventually. Maybe Canadians intuitively understand that the U.S. is working through some weird stuff right now and we can be patient. If we really believed that the pipeline would never get built, perhaps we’d have thrown a more traditional tantrum.

But it seems bigger and more fundamental than that, and Keystone is again the best example. There seemed little upset when the automatic response to the delay (perhaps permanent) in Keystone’s developed was for Canadian officials to say we’ll just sell our oil elsewhere, and if the U.S. doesn’t want it, that’s fine with us. That’s a mature position — not to mention an entirely economically correct one — but it also speaks to the new reality. Canadians like Americans, but we don’t need them as much as we once did. And if they are too busy fixing their own problems to pay us the deference we’ve traditionally felt we’ve been owed, you know what? That’s OK. We’ll just go sell our stuff to Korea.

It will take a long time for this new Canadian attitude to really cement itself, if it ever does. But if current trends continue, we may not be far off from the day when articles like Burney’s, listing off all the ways that America has let Canada down, simply don’t get written anymore because Canadians no longer care.

No matter how justifiable the argument, there was never a chance President Barack Obama would agree to have Cuba attend the next session of the Organization of American States, and Ozzie Guillen knows why.

Guillen is the new manager of the Miami Marlins. Until a week or so ago he was a popular guy, one of the chief public faces of a franchise that has spent heavily to revitalize itself, buying up free agents and opening a sparkling new stadium with its own nightclub and swimming pool. Then Guillen – who is from Venezuela – made the mistake of telling a reporter he admired Fidel Castro for his ability to remain in power over a period of six decades.

The next time we saw Guillen was during an hour-long act of contrition in the heart of Miami’s Little Havana, where he heartily begged “on my knees” for forgiveness. “When you make a mistake like this, you can’t sleep.”

If Castro has managed to hang onto power for 60 years, that’s also 60 years during which Florida’s community of Cuban exiles has been nursing its grudge against him. And while a baseball manager may not fully appreciate the danger of offending them, a president intent on re-election certainly does.

Unless Mitt Romney proves to be an utter disaster as a candidate, the odds are Florida will play a major role in deciding the next president, just as it has in the past several elections. Florida is identified as one of nine crucial swing states the winning candidate absolutely must win to come out on top. Obama won all nine in 2008, but Florida voted for George W. Bush in both previous elections, and swung back behind the Republicans in the 2010 midterms. Only once since 1972 has the state failed to back the winning candidate (in 1992), and there is talk Romney could choose Florida Sen. Marco Rubio as his running mate to close the deal. Rubio is the American-born son of Cuban immigrants.

With all that going on, the OAS was lucky Obama didn’t leap to his feet to denounce Castro, in Spanish, at the mere suggestion of his presence at future meetings. If you could ever get him to admit it, he’d probably acknowledge the U.S. embargo against Cuba has been worse than useless, and that some well-placed investment might be far more helpful in diluting his remaining authority and ensuring U.S. can reclaim an important role on the island when Fidel eventually goes to meet his maker. But Obama also might as well concede the election right now if a word of that were to escape his lips.

None of this would have escaped the awareness of arch-political strategist Stephen Harper. Mr. Harper is savvy enough in his dealings with Washington that he’s successfully cultivated a friendly relationship with the freest-spending, most deficit-happy president in history. Mr. Obama’s budget record must give Mr. Harper the willies, yet all the evidence we’re able to accumulate via their public appearances suggests they have a sophisticated appreciation of one another’s politics, and get along just fine.

Mr. Harper understood what was going on when Mr. Obama delayed the Keystone XL pipeline in January. It was all about politics, and the president’s need to keep green voters on side until after November’s election. Nonetheless, he declared a newfound determination to peddle Alberta’s oil to the communists (in this case China, not Cuba).

Mr. Obama’as decision did him some damage, as he was accused of throwing away jobs in a time of recession, and he later pledged his support for a leg of the pipeline farther to the south. Then, last week, Nebraska‘s state government voted support for a new route for the main pipeline that would avoid the aquifer that was the pretext for Obama’s decision. This gives the president important political cover, so that once he’s safely re-elected, he can praise himself for standing up for environmental concerns, and give the pipeline the green light.

In siding with the president on the issue of Cuba, Mr. Harper helped guide events that were already trending in Ottawa’s favour. There was little to be gained from isolating the president, and much to be achieved by gaining Mr. Obama’s appreciation. Besides, just last week Castro took the opportunity to mock Harper as a stooge of the U.S. and denounce Canada for its mining activities in Latin America. In making his decision on the OAS, Mr. Harper could either win some valuable credit in Washington by supporting Obama, or side with a communist dictator who still thinks Pierre Trudeau was God’s gift to Canada. Somehow I doubt it took him long to choose.